Nan Sherwood on the Mexican Border Part 27

"Pa.s.senger plane X 52 headed toward the border missing. Nan Sherwood--"

Walker Jamieson in a newspaper office in Mexico City got no further as the news came over the wire. He grabbed a phone, asked for long distance, and called the hacienda.

Yes, they had received the news. No, they didn't know anything beyond what Walker did. Nan was traveling alone. Walker breathed a deep sigh of relief at this. He had been afraid that Alice was with her.

It was all a complete mystery. Couldn't Walker do something? This plea came from Alice herself and it wrung his heart.

"I'll try." These were the words with which he hung up and somehow they comforted the young woman on the phone. She turned to her father and said simply, "It was Walker. He'll help."

And Walker did. While government planes swooped back and forth again and again across the country looking for a wrecked plane, Walker was busy working out his own theories.

"I tell you," he was calling his New York editor, "there's a whale of a good story here, one that's bigger than anyone has guessed. This is no mere plane accident.

"How do I know? Oh, just smart that way. Can't tell you more now. Want to go through with it? It will cost plenty of dough. Need a plane and a couple of darn good pilots.

"Sky's the limit, you say? Okey-doke." With this he slammed the receiver down and was off.

He went to the United States Emba.s.sy, called the hacienda again, hired a plane and zoomed off in the direction X52 was headed for when it disappeared.

For hours he and his pilot combed the district and found nothing that satisfied Walker. Then, along about nightfall a lone shack in a deserted district attracted his attention. The plane dropped down.

Nan heard it, from her shack prison she heard it and thought that it was the X52 returning. While she waited, she didn't know what she wanted the more--to have the plane come or have it stay away. If it stayed away, she thought, that somehow, some way they could get out of the cabin, but to what end she couldn't imagine. In the meantime, she was concerned over the child and the fear that it would starve.

She waited tensely as the motor died, as she heard footsteps approaching the cabin.

A voice called.

Where had she heard it before? Could it possibly be--Walker! Was she dreaming? She heard it again. This time she answered and a great flood of relief came over her. It was he! She ran to the door and shook it, although she had done it a dozen times before during the day and nothing had happened. Because Walker was here now, because there was someone out there that she knew, she felt that almost anything might come true. She pushed and shouted and beat upon the door.

Walker called to her again. This time she answered. His relief was as great as hers. She was alive. His hunch was right! He too beat upon the door with all his strength, pulled and pushed, but to no avail. Then he and the pilots got a beam and rammed it into the unresisting blockade.

After what seemed hours, the door moved on its hinges, then gave way and Walker found Nan, the pluckiest little girl in the world he said later, unharmed by her experience.

"But Mr. Jamieson," Nan questioned him as the plane he had brought took to the air with the pilots and the other prisoners, the woman and child, "how did you guess what had happened?"

He didn't hear her at first. He was already busy planning the release on the tale he had pieced together.

The lead--"Plucky Nan Sherwood Found Alive in Deserted Shack in Wilderness. Gang of smugglers exposed in daring attempt to take plane load of Chinese across the border."

Sounded good, he was thinking, but they really hadn't been exposed as yet. He knew how they worked, but he didn't know who they were. He turned now to Nan to see if he could find a clue.

"What did the men who imprisoned you look like?" he questioned her.

Nan described them briefly.

"Did you hear or see anyone besides the people you saw in the plane?" he questioned.

Nan hadn't, but as he talked she had an inspiration. "Oh, I know, maybe I can help you!" she exclaimed. Then she told him of the pictures she had snapped before boarding the transport.

The rest of the plane ride was a dash toward a place where the pictures could be developed. One by one they were brought forth from the developing fluid, until it seemed as though the inspiration had not been such a fortunate one after all. But Walker didn't give up. It was the last one that brought the desired results.

"Why, I know that man." Walker Jamieson summoned forth from his long experience as a newspaperman, the recollection of a story about an aviator who had been discharged from the airplane mail service because of irregularities. Here was a picture of the man.

Nan took it up and studied it. "Why, I know him too!" she exclaimed.

"Of course you do," Walker agreed. "He was one of the men who held up the plane, wasn't he?"

"Yes, and not only that," Nan now divulged a surprising bit of information, "he was present at the bull fight in Mexico City a few days ago."

"What do you mean?" Walker looked at her intently.

"He was there with a former schoolmate, a Linda Riggs, and he was introduced to Cousin Adair by her."

"His name?"

Nan searched back in her memory before she answered. "Arthur--"

"Howard?" Walker supplied the name.

"That's right." Nan was smiling now, thinking of Bess's glee when she found out what a position Linda would be in when this story came out.

"So, you perhaps can even locate him," Walker looked at the amazing youngster beside him.

"Linda is staying--oh, I don't know." Nan looked disappointed as she remembered that they hadn't exchanged addresses with the girl. But it didn't matter, before the night was over, Linda Riggs, thoroughly frightened because she had unwittingly entertained and been entertained by an international crook, revealed all she knew about his whereabouts.

And before the morning run of the great metropolitan daily that Walker was a.s.sociated with had gone to press, the story was completed.

Arthur Howard using visitors' pa.s.ses stolen at the border and altered to suit his needs pa.s.sed back and forth freely between the United States and Mexico. He was engaged in smuggling Chinese across and in this particularly daring attempt to finish up a big job had, after he held up the plane on which Nan had been a pa.s.senger, loaded it heavily with men who had paid high prices to make the trip.

The Chinese cook at the hacienda had been involved because he had paid a high price to try to get a relative of his across. The ring stolen from Nan was his last desperate effort to finish his payments, payments which had been draining all of his resources for months and had taken all of his life's savings. This was the part of his story that he had told Nan after she had won his confidence.

Needless to say, Arthur Howard and his gang were rounded up by a group of United States G-men and he received a long prison sentence after a startling trial.

But to Nan and her friends at the hacienda, the most important result of the whole complicated affair was a certain wedding.

"Your cousin just couldn't be mean after Walker found you," Bess hugged Nan in her excitement. "And there is to be that wedding that we talked about, and you are going to be maid of honor and we're all going to be bridesmaids. It will be in the garden and there will be lots of guests from all over the country and maybe Walter will be back here. Oh, Nan, I'm so excited!"

"And that isn't the half of it," Nan finished. "Cousin Adair has given this place to Walker and Alice and he's settled a large sum of money on them and he's inviting Momsey and Papa down for the wedding. Oh, Bess, and Rhoda's going to come too, but not by plane," she added. "Everything is just perfectly grand!"

So, let's leave Nan Sherwood and her friends to a happy, happy time, to finish out a summer in Mexico that was more exciting than they ever imagined a summer could possibly be.